


Suncity

by dragonsong (NekoAisu)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Flirting, Gardens & Gardening, Gift Fic, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25251265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/dragonsong
Summary: Haurchefant would like to say he has been a man of upstanding principle who has not been complaining about being lonely to a cactus named after one of his husbands, but that would be a godsdamned lie.
Relationships: Haurchefant Greystone/Original Character(s), Haurchefant Greystone/Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Haurchefant Greystone/Warrior of Light, Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Suncity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RaygayRaygay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaygayRaygay/gifts).



> Comm for Ray to whom i owe my entire soul  
> Tysm for letting me write for your wols!!! 
> 
> [Raegis and Xalin are not my characters and belong to Ray]

It feels strange to stand before the gates of his own home. It’s been months, nearly an entire _year_ , and the lock still sticks the way it did when he left. Raegis squeezes his palm to soothe his nerves. It’s been a while, yes, but they still belong here. He turns the handle of the gate and steps onto the property.

The first thing he notices past the rush of nostalgia is that there are a lot more plants than he remembers. The front yard had been tended to near excessively, most of the grass replaced with flowering groundcover, and the gardening plots had been extended from a few squares to entire rows of assorted plantlife. Xalin thinks that maybe he’s at the wrong house. Maybe he’s in the wrong subdivision and the massive canopy trees are someone else’s.

(He knows better than that, though. The placard outside had read _“Vieschk House | Visitors Welcome'' in_ crisp embossing. It’s the same piece he and Raegis had commissioned from the carpenters’ guild years prior. In the space below, the little section that usually denotes some form of description for the more thematically-inclined, there is instead a small note. _“And residence of one Haurchefant Greystone”_ is scribbled in what looked like wax pencil. That is a decidedly new addition.)

They haven’t even made it to the front door when a familiar face comes barreling around the corner, grin bright enough to make the sun jealous, and crashes full force into his chest. “Welcome home!”

“We’re home,” he replies, wrapping his arms around Haurchefant. Not one to be left out, Raegis plasters himself to the Elezen’s back. They stay there for a long moment before Raegis’s nose wrinkles. 

He steps back and gives Haurchefant a onceover before asking, “How long have you been _out_ here? It’s hot out.”

“Just a few hours! The trees needed pruning and I got a bit carried away,” he replies airily. “Care to see?”

Raegis wrinkles his nose, but nods anyways. While they’re both worn out from travel, Haurchefant’s excitement is tangible. They’d suffer in the sun for days if he asked them to. “Xalin, you heading inside?”

“Not quite yet,” he replies, adding on, “though it may be advised to leave our packs by the door. My back is not pleased with having been subjected to six bells on a chocobo. I doubt you are faring any better, my dear.”

Haurchefant frowns. “I can wait, I assure you. Should you want rest─”

“We _want_ to see what you’ve been working on,” Xalin interjects, smiling. “It is still surreal to return and see you waiting for us.”

“I take it that there were no strapping, blue-haired Elezen who could have given me a run for my Gil while on your adventures,” he says with a laugh. “A blessing, that, for I refuse to give up mine affections for _either_ of you without a fair fight.”

“Nor us, you.”

“So… bags? Off by the door?” Raegis prompts, swinging his pack off his shoulders and to the ground. He stretches, spine cracking like lit firesand, and groans. “Why can’t we just get a pack-chocobo next time you want to bring gifts back?”

Xalin shoots him a look when Haurchefant lights up. “They were intended to be a _surprise,”_ he says.

“Well, we best hurry to appreciate all the work our dearest, darlingest─”

“Raegis.”

“─most _wonderful_ husband has put into this estate.”

Xalin sighs, but there is nothing but affection lying beneath it. “He is the most wonderful,” he agrees. 

Haurchefant goes red to the tips of his ears. “Oh, how you flatter me,” he says, taking their hands. “Come. I have some surprises to show you both.”

And surprise them he does. Between a sunflower house he’d cultivated with the assistance of some of the estate’s younger visitors, the crystal plots turned apothecary garden, and the myriad smaller projects Haurchefant had been managing throughout the year, it’s a wonder that he hasn’t yet taken over the botanists’ guild to peddle his surprisingly comprehensive plant-related wisdoms. There’s an entire trellis of cloudcrawler for Raegis’s consumption (he’d heard it worked rather well as an anxiety-easing tea from some of the Gridanian Keepers that had helped him source the vine) and a collection of charmingly decorated pots full of assorted cacti. He points to one with a large, red flower blooming atop it and says, nearly smug, “I managed to get them to bloom just in time.”

“Not at the risk of your health, I trust?” Xalin asks. 

Haurchefant nods. “I have been careful to not strain myself overmuch, but the heat has been trying.” He shepherds them from one project to the next, talking with his hands as much as he does his mouth, and by the time they make it to his most recent fancy, he’s nearly more worked up than he was when they offered to make him groundskeeper. “This,” he says, gesturing upward at the huge canopy tree Xalin distinctly remembers being sickly when he left, “is going to hold a treehouse!”

“A house in a tree sounds nice,” Raegis says, nodding. “How grand are we going? A marble staircase, perhaps?”

Haurchefant laughs, joking back. “Oh, perish the thought! We’d need solid gold with platinum inlay if we truly intended to!”

“And coffers bigger than the entirety of the Ul’dahn Syndicate,” Xalin adds, shielding his eyes from the midday sun. “We can speak more of it inside. I doubt your complexion is faring so well as your joints, Haurchefant.”

“The aloe is specifically to soothe burns, should I stay out too long.”

“And I will see to it that you do not need it today,” he says. “Let us retire and rest. There is much we have to tell you.”

Raegis skips up to the door and snags his bag, patting it satisfiedly before tacking on, “And give you. Some of it’s more appropriate than others.”

Haurchefant’s ears perk up and he opens the door for them, sweeping an arm toward the blessedly cool living room as one would for an Ishgardian lord (if Ishgardian lords came in Xaela and Miqo’te flavors). He closes it once they’re all inside and makes sure they’ve all tapped off the dirt from their boots before collapsing in a pile on the couch. 

There are completed hunt marks pinned to the corkboard where there had been none before, a pile of adventurers’ guild aduyses spilling off the writing desk and onto the overfull message book, and a small set of colorful quills and unused parchment sticking out of one of the drawers. Haurchefant shakes his head when he follows Xalin’s gaze. “Many of the children we’ve been assisting with finding reputable work need first learn their letters. Some are more inclined toward cleanliness than others.”

“I do not mind it,” the Xaela replies. “It feels a lot more lived-in than it would with just us three.”

Raegis nods, shifting to lay across both of their laps and stare up at Haurchefant’s face the way he couldn’t while questing throughout Othard and Gyr Abania. “It’s nice.”

They sort through their belongings in portions. There are many things that simply need to be cleaned or mended, old potable bottles that should be washed and reused taking up a portion of Raegis’s inventory, and an entire collection of carefully wrapped parcels with sensibly labeled tags. 

Raegis separates the parcels into piles, passing Haurchefant a stack of them like it’s the world’s largest, least edible sandwich. “For you,” he says, and then settles back down onto his lap. 

Haurchefant holds them awkwardly before asking, “Am I to open them?”

“Aye.”

He sets them down by his side, careful that nothing tips over and onto Raegis’s face, and takes the first one off the top. The brown craft paper is evenly creased and wrapped with a length of hempen twine. The knot comes apart with minimal squinting and struggling, leaving him to unwrap the item inside. 

It’s a painting, the same type of thing he might find illustrated in a travel book, and the port depicted is more outlandish than he’s ever seen. There is a small inscription on the backside of the canvas that reads, _“Kugane port at sundown. Occupation Era.”_

“This is _remarkable,”_ he breathes, holding the little painting closer to his face as if to absorb the details better. “Is this where you’ve been while adventuring?”

“There are more,” Raegis says. “One for each place we saw and thought of you. Kugane was colorful and loud, but we thought you’d fit right in. Lotta shops and people to talk to.”

He opens the next of the stack. _“Gyr Abania after dark”_ is a collection of stars and lightning over the peaks of grand cliffs. Xalin says the cold nights were but a _whisper_ of Coerthan chill, but they had missed him sorely all the same. 

By the time he’s made it through all but one of the little parcels, he’s amassed a collection. The last one is larger, a little heavier, and oh. _Oh._ He wasn’t expecting this at all. 

There’s a painting of the rolling hills he knew as a child from visiting his mother outside of Ishgard. It includes the tall, incandescently yellow sunflowers he has missed since the Calamity. And there, in the center of his nostalgia, is him. 

Where Ser Zephirin’s magic had pierced him clean through is a brilliant wash of flowers he hasn’t seen in many a year. The back reads, _“In the honor of a dear friend, of whom I begrudge his stubbornness on all matters but this. May your life be blessed as you have made mine. Be well.”_

“Francel was quite stubborn about his want for us to visit Foundation before returning proper. He told us to make sure you received this,” Xalin says, leaning to rest his head against his shoulder. “Neither of us saw it until now.”

“Those are birdweed,” he whispers. “Oh, mother _hated_ those. She said they had more mettle than the entirety of the Temple Knights and could weather even the worst of winters. The Calamity was a bit much for them, though. Francel used to help me weed them out of the garden, back when we could grow more than the hardiest of roots.”

“In Eorzean circles, they stand for perseverance.”

“Well,” he says with a laugh, “that certainly suits!”

Raegis smiles and it’s as smitten as it is mischievous. Xalin has all of a second before he feels his face heat, a particularly incriminating box being passed from his pack to Haurchefant’s awaiting arms. 

“This is not the time─”

“So, remember how I said not all of our gifts were, uh, _appropriate?_ This is one of them and if I don’t give it to you now, Xalin will hide it in the back of the closet until _Heavensturn─”_

“Please, Raegis, my dear. Do not do this to me.”

The Seeker looks at him and his smile widens. Xalin feels a sudden and acute need to find a hole and bury himself in it. “I love you, too.”

Haurchefant simply unties the bow holding the lid in place, opens the box, and lets out a delighted laugh. “That I would have to wait until Heavensturn for such a treat would be a grievous mistake.”

“Care to test it out?” Raegis asks, waggling his brows exaggeratedly. 

He nearly vibrates off the couch before asking, “Can we?”

Xalin, resigned to his fate as enabler of debauchery and self-embarrassment, says simply, “Yes.”

They cheer. 

Even if it comes at the expense of his sensibilities, decency, and self-control, he would do anything to please them. Though, such activities can wait until _after_ they’ve all had some semblance of lunch. And washed up, in Haurchefant’s case. 

“Food first, then rampant misbehavior.”

Raegis frowns. 

“I will not allow you to wriggle your way out of decent care and keeping.”

“But─”

“No.”

Haurchefant grins at them, box tucked under one arm, and says, “Well then, no time to dally! To the kitchen!”

Xalin hopes that somehow (impossibly) the arduous process of making ham and cheese sandwiches will tire them out enough to allow him to avoid his impending doom. A bell later finds his wish far from granted, though he cannot bring himself to mind. Raegis and Haurchefant smile at him the same way they do when he does something particularly special, though the context makes them seem terribly indulgent and far from innocent. Hands laying against his skin, Haurchefant asks in nearly the same tone as he had earlier, “Can we?”

“Of course.”

**Author's Note:**

> [GESTURES AT THEM] BEHOLD!!! SOFT HUSBANDS!!!!
> 
> hmu on:  
> Twitter [@khirimochi](https://twitter.com/khirimochi) OR [@TheHolyBody (NSFW)](https://twitter.com/TheHolyBody)  
> Tunglr @[Main](https://kiriami.tumblr.com) OR @[FFXIV Imagines](https://ffxivimagines.tumblr.com)


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